So I watched this today someone explain as much of it as possible haha.

Let me also explain what I know for sure. The girl is psychic the pyramid thing can be used to knock her out/stop her from using her powers. She is trapped in this lab, being held prisoner. Her father is the old man doing drugs staring at the screen all day. (Are we to assume he died, did Nyle kill him?) Nyle killed the girls mom upon returning from the black liquid. (Why did he do this? Why didn't the father do anything about this?) The black liquid appears to have taken away Nyles hair and eye pigmentation, Nyle also has psychic powers, which means I think we can somewhat safely assume that traveling through the black liquid gives and or unlocks psychic powers. (The girls mom mention Nyle is to retrieve the motherload on his journey, another question)

So the girl successfully escapes from the compound which turns out to be a dome composed of triangles(triangles/pyramids are highly prevalent throughout the film) by going through the physionaut(wtf was that thing) and something I will simply refer to as the "worm zombie thing". Nyle goes after her after killing his wife. He has some sort of device to track her. He finds two dudes campin out near where the device says she is. He kills them both before encountering the girl. The girl stops him from moving using her telekinesis then smashes his head on rock appearing to kill him. Roll credits.

Which I believe makes her the only character who survived the film, unless you count the worm zombie guy as a character lol. Also unsure about her dad hopefully you guys can help me that.

So yeah lemme know what you guys thought about the movie, feel free to correct my analysis of what "literally" happened throughout the movie as well as what you think it all meant. Thanks!

I hated the movie. Too damn slow. What I could glean of the plot amounts to the facility symbolizing a science lab which ends up creating good (Elena) and evil (Nyle), who are then unleashed upon the world.

Because it spends so much time delving into how they were created before entering the world (which is something nobody knows, which puts a severe limit to how meaningful that entire portion of the movie could be), the movie has no time for a proper final battle or climax, beyond Nyle being made to trip and hitting a stone. The End.

If you like your movies to be *about* something, have a *plot* and some *action*, this movie will bore you to death, as it did me.

*insert death rattle here*

Not a single person in this thread was able to successfully analyze this movie. None of you get it. I won't even bother ha HO

Here's a great write-up of how hypnotism works in the film: http://cinemabeans.blogspot.com/2012/05/beyond-black-rainbow-or-hypnotizing.html

made for people on LSD by people on LSD! I would love to have heard the pitch they used to the studio to get the money for this! at least there were no zombies!
robot heads! really dead guys! crazy little chicks from god knows where!

while i'm not above missing things in film, i genuinely believe this film lacked the subtext that existed in - as an obvious example - 2001, making it laborious to watch on a level rivaling Begotten. my feeling is that if you're going to put out something this intensely slow-paced - regardless of the undeniable aesthetic beauty, you need to have some serious subtext going on to give the viewer something to ponder. and while the ambiguity of plot certainly raised questions in BBR, i simply don't believe there were enough answers - real or subjective - to warrant the degree of introspective duration that i and my friends endured. needless to say, the "should've taken acid before i watched this" level for BBR was quite high for me, personally. quite simply, i'm not so sure there was adequate intellectual substance - visceral enhancement may be required.

this lack of subtext which i perceived - and which i think most other responders
to this thread seem to have agreed on implicitly with their minimal input - is the only real relation that my rant has to this thread. was it just me or did BBR seem so much like an homage? the most obvious feeling one gets is that of 2001, which my fellow film-geeks have already noted. aesthetic similarities ("modern" sci-fi set design which i feel pinnacled with 2001) as well as a seeming lack of climax. climax was so frequently reliant on an intense soundtrack with long, anti-climatic shots,which reminded me also of Kubrick's The Shining as well. the scenes outside of the lab served to break up the claustrophobia which was also a theme in The Shining, and this liberation was complete in the finale. at that point the filmaker almost seemed to switch genres, moving into a period horror movie. i love (with no sarcasm intended) being tricked into the anticipation of change of pace only to be disappointed.

taken as a whole, the decision to make this a period film seems to have no other purpose other than to convey a love for those wonderful late 60's/70's/80's sci-fi films whose "futuristic" elements allow one to so easily date said films in an almost comical manner. of course i assume that the filmmaker had dystopic-prisoner-of-society pieces such as Soylent Green, Farenheight 451, A Clockwork Orange, THX, Omega Man, Logan's Run (the list goes on) somewhere in his mind. finally, we have to mention Bladerunner. the soundtrack for BBR (amazing i should note) - though qualitatively different - kept Vangelis' groundbreaking soundtrack in the back of the mind. the originality and tone (superficially, they were both quite unique and creative in their use of electronics) i think force comparison. and then their was the dynamic in both films of the old, elusive man of power and his prodigal automaton, the parallel forced upon the viewer in an "of course" moment
with an almost identical eye-gouging shot (some Event Horizon in there?).

with all my dull commentary, i return to a previous comment that there are no answers. in summary, i think it was a beautiful and meditative homage. though certainly not lacking in originality, this originality came largely from aesthetic regions, and it looks to me like the author of this thread probably understood the plot as much as anyone else might.

i thought a lot of the action took place in their minds. most of the film was mind melding and mind warfare. they were on heavy doses of psychotropic drugs for many years- the girl her whole life. the 60's cult-origin flashback scene was them taking the drug and disappearing into those transcendental *beep* states that heroic doses of psychedelics will bring on. thats what the black ink symbolized to me. i think the book was a scientific journal of her mental and emotional state over the years.

I had two main gripes with the story and I think this thread cleared up one, but not the other.

1) I didn't think there was any motivation for Barry to undergo his transformation and kill his wife. But as discussed above... was it the phone call that did this? I don't remember the sequence of events but that would make sense.

2) How/why did Lena escape when she did? Was this tied to Barry's transformation? Was one entity pulling the strings to make these things happen at the same time?

HAIL TO THE CHIMP! http://i35.tinypic.com/1zoxa4m.gif